Crossing a Dawnlit Pond (two poems)

You who do not soar with the majesty of eagles,

Who do not stride the water with the pride of a goose,

Who possess neither the plumage of a swan nor the sleek …

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follow this link for the rest of the poem

Rebranding Ruination

In Expectation of Ragnarok

As the sole current contributor to Filibusted.net, I now claim the right to expand and alter the site as I desire. To celebrate this freedom, I will begin with a topic quite essential to historically American democracy, beer.

Stone Ruination IPA is a glory in and of itself. Like the perfect salt and vinegar potato chip, neat glass of whiskey, or joy-delivering friendly kick in the teeth, its beauty is both glorious and astringent. The hops, yes, the hops. A current obsession of American craft brewery yet no less a beauty of itself, yet still, the hops are not the full beauty. Yes, this beer is hoppy. Some have compared it to a chaninsaw, some to an explosion of palatial destruction, and all of these accounts are true. My wife was busy sipping a Smuttynose Baltic Porter, a chocolate/coffee/pinot noir amalgamation, “a really great cup of hot chocolate with a perfect pinot noir taste to it,” in her words. It’s true. It was great. Try it.

However, that’s not the point of this review. In an attempt to taste this syrupy, stout-like beauty of a porter, I had to sip and hold a small amount on my tongue for a count of twenty to even have a chance to appreciate it with a subsequent substantial taste after Stone’s soliloquy of hop-salivation. Stone’s Ruination is not just a hoppy decimation, it is complex and beautiful.

Like Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, a brutal surface belies the complex beauty of a master’s craft. First, the visual. Yes, this is the least necessary of attributes. However, like any great work of craftsmanship, Stone’s Ruination allows no detail to speak itself as less than genius. Yes, it is golden. Yes, it is amber. However, this golden-amber amalgamation is more emotional dream than mere ocular obfuscation. On a cloudy day in Plymouth, MA, the beer began as light in vaguary. Then, as the sun descended, it took on the amber beauty of a golden solidity loved by Odin on the eve of Fenris’ awakening. The beer’s bouquet, yes, I use the word without shame, is more than flowers. It is honeysuckle amidst fresh-mown grass on the 13th hole of disc-golf before a night at the bar (thank you, seymour for that discovery).

Finally, the taste. Like so many far-more-glorious fools before me, I will try to describe in words what one cannot. Yes, it has hops. Yes, they do not relent…ever…at all. However, it is golden. Gold is bright. Gold is intentional. Gold is unforgiving brilliance in a fallen world. That, my friends, is Stone Ruination. Yes, it is Ruination. However, it ruins only one’s ability to accept less than perfection in a world of far too common compromise. The mead of which you read on the day before Beowulf meets the dragon, that is what Stone has created.

Enjoy.

Obama Orders Mubarak to Step Down?

Photograph: KHALED DESOUKI/AFP

No, the title of this post is not the result of any inside information I have about contact between President Obama and President Mubarak.  What it is, however, is what many of us want to hear.  We want to hear the president of the United States demand that the President of Egypt listen to the clearly expressed will of his people and announce his resignation.  It would touch every ideal we have of our nation and of the American Presidency.

The memory of President Reagan’s clarion “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” and President Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner!” are so ingrained in our culture that those of us not yet born for one or both of those events still feel that we remember them.  We want President Obama to stand up and make just such a call for freedom.  Just as the fall of the iron curtain led to one generations’ expansion of freedom at the center of its most dangerous conflict, so too, could democratic revolutions leading to truly representative governments throughout the middle east lead to a revolution of ideas and participatory government in the heart of today’s most conflicted region.

But, wait a minute, should the president of the United States tell one nation who should or should not rule it? Isn’t American meddling in the domestic affairs of other nations one of its biggest mistakes? From Vietnam to Iran to Latin America, have not generations of dictators only gained and held power thanks to generations of immoral American support and intervention?  Doesn’t President Barack Hussein Obama set a new example by saying that the people of Egypt deserve our support and a transition to democracy must begin now but that he will not say who should or should not rule Egypt?  Isn’t this exactly what we want in a leader?

Still, Hosni Mubarak has received American support for pretty much his entire three decade rule.  Doesn’t that, then, give an American President the right to reverse that support in order to change course for his own nation?  Would not removing support from Mubarak and calling on him to step down be similar to removing support from the Shah of Iran or abandoning Diem to defeat saving thousands of American lives?  Isn’t it time to put real pressure on Mubarak to leave office now?

But how would we apply that pressure?  The greatest American lever on the Egyptian machine of state is our greater-than-one-billion-dollar yearly support of the Egyptian military.  We could threaten to revoke that if Mubarak doesn’t step down.  Without our support, surely the Egyptian military would degrade to the point of being ineffective, right? Or maybe just this threat would be enough to push the military, already seemingly unsure of its opinion of Mubarak, to pressure him into leaving office.

But wait, hasn’t the military been a force for order and support of the protesters?  How many tanks have protesters painted with their slogans?  How many photographs have protesters taken with soldiers, how many soldiers have they carried on their shoulders in celebration.  How many protesters stood arm-in-arm to protect the Cairo museum as one of the Egyptian military’s tanks parked behind them in support?  When have we ever before seen a human chain of protesters, instead of blocking a tank, supported by one?  When Egyptian pro-Mubarak forces, by all accounts organized and deployed by the state, attacked peaceful protesters in Cairo and Alexandria, did not the military step between the two sides to separate them?  Why should we threaten a military that has shown exemplary support of its people even stating, “Your message was received and we know your demands…We are with you and for you,” as it urged calm on Wednesday?  Could not such threats cause some in the military to view the protesters as an enemy and lead to the kind of Tiananmen-like confrontations the military has, thus-far, done so well to avoid?

Well, what about simply telling Mubarak to step down?  The United States is clearly his most powerful ally.  Just the force of an American president telling him to resign, wouldn’t that help?  Maybe not.  Right now, Mubarak seems to have no support from the Arab street.  Could taking a stand against an interventionist demand from an American president change that? Sure, the mass of opinion seems to be with the protesters.  However, might not having an imperialist-seeming American president to defy sufficiently muddy the waters for Mubarak to claim retaining power as an act of Egyptian independence from America?  This is a man who has held on to power for thirty years and, by many reports, had been grooming his son to continue that role in the future.  Is bowing to direct pressure on a world stage even possible for him?

So, if threatening the military is a mistake and directly making demands of Mubarak is dangerous, might not behind-the-scenes, high-pressure diplomacy be the best and most fruitful course of action?   Mubarak moved from condemning the protesters a few days ago to promising that neither he nor his son will run in accelerated elections.  Internet service, according to New York Times reports, is beginning to somewhat return in Egypt.  Are these not the fruits of the Obama administration’s approach?  Like the healthcare bill’s resurrection after Scott Brown’s seemingly nail-in-the-coffin resurrection and Obama’s success after his 2010 election “shellacking” might this not be evidence of a president who knows how to actually get things done despite whatever outcry, panic, and condemnation the national or international media offers?

Perhaps President Obama still is the coolest man in the room.  Perhaps he is doing exactly what he should.

Still, there is the new dimension of pro-Mubarak, government orchestrated or not, forces attacking protesters.  This threatens chaos.  No less a mind that Nicholas Kristoff warned of, witnessed, then discussed this on the ground in Tahrir Square near his old apartment.

The situation is muddy.  The correct course is unclear.  Is this a Gordian Knot to be cut with clear speech about human rights or a nautilus shell to be threaded by careful dialogue out of the public eye?

Bob Schieffer’s Passive Acceptance

On Face the Nation this morning, Howard Dean said the Tea Party has some racist fringe elements, but many of them are people who want the people to have more power and influence in the country like supporters of me did when I ran for president.  Liz Cheney’s response, basically, “Howard, you’re wrong for portraying the tea party as an extreme right group.”

What? Seriously, and Bob Schieffer didn’t even call her on it.  Then, Lindsey Graham characterized the cap and trade bill he supported as so extreme that Democrats are shooting holes in it.  Now, the Democratic Senate candidate in West Virginia may have done so, but don’t you think honesty might have required Lindsey to mention that he supported the bill that he is now characterizing as part of a liberal fringe?

Why We Fight?

Here’s a sentence from a student’s essay concerning war’s justification or lack thereof.  They just finished reading All Quiet on the Western Front, and I asked them to consider the reasons for war against the actions in war.  After describing the brutality of WWI, he wrote, “In my eyes, there is no such better way of solving conflicts because there is no such thing as peace without the crazy people who cause violence and are, quite frankly, worth killing to obtain peace…Without these moments there is no peace in the world because peace doesn’t exist without violence.”

What do you think?

Tim Cahill is a Moron

Tim Cahill is running for governor of MA as an Independent.  I had considered voting for him, at least looking into him.  Then I saw an add of his this morning.  In consecutive sentences he promises to cut the sales tax in half and “put more cops on the street.”  And, as you cut state revenue from taxes, moron, where exactly to you plan to find the money to pay more police officers, let alone the ones we already have?

http://www.youtube.com/user/TimForGovernor#p/a/u/0/Q80cqQCf1fc

Watch the handy dandy text, particularly six seconds into the ad-swill.

(Sorry about not embedding the video.  Apparently, Tim wants to keep his moronity to his own sight.)

Why I’m Voting Republican

Tea Party Truthiness?

A recent fbook conversation for your perusal and amusement:

Person A: Personally, I’m sick of these “tea baggers” and their bastardization of the Jeffersonian concepts of “limited government”. Christ on a cracker, these people can’t SPELL socialism, much less define it. We’ve just been through 8 years of “laissez faire” government in which the “sanctity and wisdom” of the markets would k…eep the economy growing and curtail any possible problems…and we see where we are now. And what about Nikki Riley…really, Nikki Riley?!? I’m ecstatic to see a woman run…just not THAT woman!! Paul, DeMint, Beck…all are nabobs of negitivism. Always remember…when you have no ideas,can’t lead, and want to get to or stay in office…slur, slander, and short sell your opponent and his/her ideas

Person B: Apparently, the easiest way to get into politics now is to have a pretty face, say some cutesy bullshit and hold extremist Christian viewpoints.

Person C: “..slur, slander, and short sell your opponent and his/her ideas.”

Talk about living in a glass house and throwing stones! You berate, attack and insult people in the Tea Party, and then say that such behavior is bad? Wow. How about citi…ng facts? Too hard for you?

Obama has had TWO SOLID Years in office with a overwhelming Democrat-majority vote. Every single legislative vote he has gone through has been because of democrats fighting amongst themselves, not because the GOP could stop them from passing a bill. But you don’t mention that. Curious.

When will it not be Bush’s fault? Still can’t take responsibility for your actions?

Person D: tea baggers! …because if there’s anything we can’t talk about enough, it’s illegal immigration! because that is the real problem americans face today! i don’t know what they are doing that is so terrible (besides the things we don’t want to do ourselves), but whatever is wrong with this cuntry, it’s the mexicans’ fault! yeah right…

Shay’s Rebellion: in “two solid years in office,” president obama has pushed through an equal pay for women bill, student loan reform that actually gives loans to students instead of banks, a stimulus bill that every independent study agrees has saved or cre…ated millions of jobs (literally, millions, and that’s with only 57% used so far, http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/106xx/doc10682/11-30-ARRA.pdf) and increased real GDP in 2009 1.2-3.2% beyond what it would have been without the act, & a health insurance reform that is far weaker than it should be and far better than what we had. yes, democrats have fought amongst themselves so “getting to 60” has been difficult, but the party easily had strong majorities of 55 to 59 on many issues, including repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” that would have been fine if the republican policy had been anything other than a clone of nancy reagan’s failed anti-drug program, “just say no.”

hell, if tip o’neil could work with reagan and newt gingrich could work with clinton, why can’t republicans work with a democrat who proposed a health care bill that was damn close to the counter-bill republicans offered and democrats rejected under clinton?

as for facts, seriously, you want facts? john mccain refused to support the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” saying this shouldn’t happen until the president, the chairman of the joint chiefs, and the secretary of defense certify that doing so won’t damage unit cohesion or moral. let’s ignore for a moment that israel has gay soldiers serving openly with no problems, and that country is constantly on the edge of war. mccain’s position was bs simply on the facts. the bill stated that the repeal would not go into affect UNTIL AFTER the very people mccain cited had certified the very thing he asked that they certify.

that’s my rant for now.

Shay’s Rebellion: also, “when will it not be bush’s fault”? how about when obama has the kind of yearly economic surplus that democrats handed bush in 2000

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There you go, ah the kindling kindness of election season is upon us.

Morons at the Gates

The greatest advocates of capitalism, in my experience, are those who can or have manipulated it to their benefit so that they profit more than their neighbors, often at the expense of their neighbors.  Business owners pay employees less than a living wage either because they hire unskilled workers who can find no other employment, they hire students looking for spending money, or they tell employees things like, “It’s a buyer’s market,” to drive home the idea that if you ask for what you have earned they will simply fire you and hire someone cheaper.

Anyway, a free market with government regulation to prevent abuse (the Scandinavian “Middle Way”) seems to be the right approach.  I know many Americans, both pundits and ordinary people, would ridicule the idea of government intervention saying government cannot do anything without making an overbudget mess of it.  And there’s some truth to that.  But an unrestrained free market? Seriously?  Somehow, they continue to say this after government’s exit from the markets (repealing Glass Steagall, etc.) precipitated the greatest economic crisis in fifty years?  Morons.

A Smart President

Letting Rachel Maddow give half of your speech to Netroots Nation is pretty bright.  Even as skeptical as I am (considering Afghanistan, compromised Wallstreet and Healthcare reform, half-sized stimulus, etc), I was impressed.